


mortality and occasional bees

by Isa1187



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Bees, Fandom Trumps Hate, Gen, Is there a word for that?, a bit of both?, and sera is practical, friendship fic, in which dorian angsts, not quite angst and not quite fluff, where do all those possessed corpses come from anyway, with angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-24 05:46:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16634078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isa1187/pseuds/Isa1187
Summary: Where are all those undead coming from, anyway? Dorian and Sera realize just how many people the Venatori have hurt and try to set things right. Also, there are bees.





	1. Chapter 1

It was a sharp day in Skyhold when the Inquisitor called a war council to announce they were preparing to travel to the Hissing Wastes. The meeting itself should have been the highlight of the the months he’d spent huddled in this remote castle, the news that they were hunting Venatori all that Dorian had hoped for, but the dismal climate managed to suck some of the joy from even this. 

It was blindingly bright, contrasting with the sort of wind that cut into your skin, no matter how many layers you wore. Dorian disapproved. 

Not that he’d bothered to wear an appropriate number of layers, in any case. There was such a thing as style, after all, or at least that’s what he said when Varric joked about how much he was shivering. Privately, he admitted that he had barely left the cozy library in days and had momentarily forgotten how misleadingly cheery the sunshine could be here, in the clear air of the mountains. And the summons came while he was occupied with a particularly interesting book on creation myths in magic-using cultures, so he had merely sighed and made his way through the rest of Skyhold in only his usual elaborate outfit of finest silk and intricate leather straps.

“I still think a force of templars is called for if you’re to fight mages,” Cullen was saying as Dorian tuned back into the war council. The man always did try to solve his problems by swinging several dozen swords at them.

“Any advance force will alert them to our presence,” Leliana replied. “We are better off sending a scout to survey the area in advance of a small group of warriors. Don’t you agree, Josephine?” 

“Of course,” the Ambassador said. Cullen spluttered in annoyance as his brute-force plan was overridden for what must have been the umpteenth time. “Subtlety is the key. You will need a place to resuppy while in the desert, but I believe I know a minor noble who may be willing to send a small shipment of fresh food and water once you have established a base.” She looked toward Trevelyan, tilting her head an implicit request for permission to write the appropriate letters. “Do you have anything to add?” 

“Only that the Commander’s men will turn into slow-cooked little parcels if they’re out in the desert in all that armor,” Dorian couldn’t help but add, although the invitation had clearly been meant for Trevelyan. “And you can’t go wrong with setting a Tevinter mage to catch a group of Tevinter mages.” 

Trevelyan finally looked up from where she had been surveying the war table with a scowl of almost frightening intensity. “Order the scout immediately,” she said to Leliana, nodding to soften the sternness of her voice. “We’ll need a few days to order armor suitable for the climate, and it never hurts to give the scouts a head-start on reconnaissance. Does that suit you, Dorian?” 

He felt his most heartfelt smile in at least a month creep onto his face. “Your words are like the finest music,” he said with a dramatic half-bow.

### 

The appointed day came after a week of preparation, spent sharpening swords and filling packs and commissioning armor. Dorian decided on a robe of silk brocade for the occasion, spelled to resist any hostile magic and, just as importantly, dyed a dark blue to accent the rich leather of his tunic. 

Iron Bull snorted in open amusement as the travelling companions gathered for their journey. “Silk? Just what i’d expect a ‘Vint to wear on a hunting party.” 

Dorian sniffed with all the disdain of a Tevinter whose fashion choices have been brought into question. “We can’t all be naturally resistant to the sun,” he replied. “And one needs something to protect their skin from sand. Have you considered a shirt? Perhaps in a nice shade of plaidweave, to match those circus pants? You’ll have a few more scars to worry about if a sandstorm springs up.” 

Predictably, Iron Bull just grinned. “Nah, we don’t have thin skin like you. Besides, redheads like a few scars.” 

The final member of their party arrived predictably late, Sera clambering down from a nearby wall rather than bothering to use the stairs placed a few hundred feet away. 

“Well? Time to arrow some mages, yeah?” she said by way of greeting. 

“I do hope you aren’t including me in that group,” Dorian said, flippant words hiding the shred of concern that Sera was, in fact, including him in the group of people who needed to be shot at. He didn’t know the archer very well, but had the sense that she could be dangerously unpredictable. 

Sera’s laugh was bubbling and bright and utterly unreassuring, and yet somehow managed to be the least concerning thing about her. The jagged haircut, the sharp eyes always looking for a way to make mischief, the wandering dialect and, of course, the propensity to fire arrows at anything she didn’t like all came far ahead. 

“So long as you don’t go all blood-magic demony we’re good, yeah?” Sera said, with a grin as worrying as her laugh. 

“You know, I’ve changed my mind,” Dorian said, squinting at the bright yellow-checked leggings and ragged armor Sera was wearing. “If you shoot my eyes out now at least I won’t have to look at the plaidweave you call clothes. And blinding me would make my spells amusingly unpredictable. Everyone wins!” 

The conversation was cut short as Trevelyan stood up from where she’d been lurking by the entrance of the Keep, adjusting her knives and effortlessly swinging onto one of their waiting horses, banter replaced by grumbling about the eternally frigid weather of skyhold and trying to readjust after weeks of not riding, at least on Dorian’s part. He spent far more time researching in the comfortable indoors than he did wandering the countryside these days. There was no lack of people who could help Trevelyan harvest plants and close rifts, but the Inquisition had few who could research the blasted thing, let alone make sense of anything related to Corypheus. . So Dorian spent most of his days perched in the library, sipping tea and flipping through long-forgotten books. Not that any of them had proved useful.

Privately, he was happy to leave Skyhold even though it meant braving the disgusting weather of Orlais. He’d forgotten how invigorating wandering could be.

The relative silence lasted half a day at best, and Dorian found himself wondering if the Inquisitor regretted her choice of party. At least two of the travelers were, apparently, constitutionally incapable of ever shutting up, and Dorian included himself in that number. 

“Do all Tevinters dress like you?” Sera asked, out of the blue, after they’d been riding for a scant couple hours. 

“Ah, I assume you’re referring to my flair, panache, and impeccable use of color.” 

Sera’s giggle sounded a bit too amused for comfort. “More like they’re gonna have a tea party, with noble arseholes. And like they need a map to get undressed.” 

“Perish the thought,” Dorian said in mock surprise. “A tea party? Only if the scones are served with a nice congealed blood spread. My countrymen emphasize darkness and despair rather than anything aesthetically pleasing. My style is rather unpopular, which should tell you more than enough about the state of fashion there.”

“Despair? What, like,” and Sera dropped her horses reins to wave dramatically in the air, “ooooooh, I’m a mage, I cackle all the time, feeeaaaar meeee!” 

“The likeness is uncanny. You need more spikes, however, and a few splatters of blood. One must always look like one is ready to summon a demon, after all.” 

“Still more practical than the strips of leather you call clothes. How long’s it take you to fasten those?” 

“Ah, you’re assuming that a truly fashionable person ever undresses. In fact,” Dorian fought to keep a straight face, “one of our national heroes created several spells designed to clean clothes while one is wearing them.” 

“Ooooh, fancy Tevinter mage does magic just to keep his shirt clean. Keep that away from me.” 

“I wouldn’t dream of sullying my spells with plaidweave, Sera.” 

“Good. Or arrows.” 

### 

Because nothing ever was easy, halfway between the Hissing Wastes and Skyhold the wildlife fell ominously silent. Iron Bull cocked his head in watchfulness. 

“You hear that?”, he asked the group. 

All Dorian heard was his own teeth chattering as the ever-present drizzle soaked through his robes. “Hear what, exactly? Wind, rain, all of the disgusting sounds of the outdoors?” Dorian paused. “Although now that you point it out, I haven’t heard a bird in several minutes. It almost feels like i’m not surrounded by all of this nature.” 

“Yeah.” The word came out as the sort of growl that made Dorian privately wonder many other things about Iron Bull. “Be ready.” 

A few paces behind them, Sera rummaged through one of the many bags slung over her horse. “Always am, aren’t I? And I’ve got surprises I wanted to try.” She hefted some sort of round bottle meaningfully. 

Dorian squinted at it. The bottle looked similar to the grenades Sera carried on her belt, but something seemed different. He squinted at it, blocking out the unnatural silence of the woods.

“Sera,” he said cautiously, hoping he was wrong. “Is that jar… buzzing?” 

“Hah! Good surprise for anyone who gets near. Bet they’ll run so fast they’ll leave their pants behind.” 

“So you’re saying that the bottle you’re holding is, in fact, buzzing. Dare I ask what’s inside it? Or shall we leave it to my imagination? I can think of so many terrible things. Bees. Wasps. A swarm of little demons.” 

“Ugh, leave the demons to yourself. Nothing wrong with a jar of wasps. Toss them at people, and they get driven off quick.” 

“Yes, I’d… imagine so. Just, please, be careful where you aim them.” Dorian tried not to visualize the possible future where he ended up sprinting through the forest, chased by a swarm of angry bees thrown by a careless archer, frantically searching for a way to drive them off. What was one supposed to do in the case of bees? He’d heard something about smoke, and something else about jumping in a lake. 

“Are there any bodies of water in the area?” He forced his tone of voice to light, academic interest. Clearly he wasn’t making contingency plans for being chased by a swarm of bees, he just had a research question that necessitated a local body of water. 

Iron Bull snorted, and behind him even Trevellyan chuckled. 

“Well they aren’t for you, fancypants,” Sera scolded. “I’m not wasting these on people what don’t need bees thrown at them.” 

“Humor me, please,” Dorian said. “If you were to call off the bees, what method would you use? Smoke? Water?” 

“They’re bees. There’s no calling them off, they just. Sting, buzz around, make honey. Bee stuff.” Sera swept her arms out, presumably in an illustration of “bee stuff”, and the bottle teetered precariously.

“Sera, please. What would one of us do if you did, hypothetically, throw bees at us? I’m not disparaging your aim, but things can happen in the heat of battle.” 

“Archers don’t miss,” Sera said with a surprisingly stuck-up sniff. “If you had bees it’d be because I threw them at you. And you’d deserve it. I dunno, throw one of those fires you use at them. That kills most things.” 

“Most things includes myself! That seems like a major flaw in this plan you’ve suggested.” But Dorian let the topic drop. And changed the subject for good measure, lest anyone think he was getting truly panicked over the thought of a few insects. 

“I hear birds again. How awful,” he said, off-handedly. 

“Hmmm. Guess we aren’t being attacked after all,” Iron Bull muttered. “Strange.” 

“If I were a bandit I wouldn’t attack a group that was debating the merits of bee-based grenades,” Trevelyan remarked softly from the rear of the group. “New idea: let’s keep talking about this forever and drive off anyone who thinks we might be easy targets.” 

“Hah! Didn’t even need to use them to use them! See?” Sera was unreservedly triumphant. “Bees!” 

“Or they were spying on us,” Iron Bull said, squinting in one-eyed suspicion at the trees on either side of the trail. “It’s not hard to tell that we’re with the Inquisition, even if we aren’t flying a banner. Who else would have a vint, a qunari, and an elf in the same group?” 

Trevelyan shrugged. “We aren’t trying to conceal our movements. Let them spy.” And, after a moment of careful consideration, “Sera? Can you make any more of those grenades? I could use a few.” 

Sera’s laughter was as smug as it was explosive.

### 

The rest of the path to the Hissing Wastes was uneventful. Surprisingly so, even. Dorian had expected at least one bee-based mishap.

The Hissing Wastes themselves were disgustingly sandy and windy, and, incredibly, cold. “How can a desert be cold?” Dorian asked in disbelief. “Does this not bother any of you?” 

Iron Bull laughed, shrugging shoulders that weren’t even covered by any sort of cloth.

“Is this cold?”, Trevelyan said, the poor Ferelden apparently completely unaware that better climates existed. 

Sera plucked at her tunic. “Plaidweave’s warm,” she said. “Could make you some, if you stop being such a picky fancypants about it.” 

“I’ll freeze, thanks,” Dorian said, wrinkling his nose. “At least I’ll leave a beautiful corpse.” 

“A corpse that’ll get picked up by some Venatoris. You want to be a pretty undead thing instead of a unfashionable live mage?” 

“Ugh,” was Dorian’s only remark on the matter. 

And then they arrived at their campsite, and were greeted by the Inquisition scouts who always seemed to get to their destination first, and all discussion of fashion and necromancy ceased as Sera and Trevelyan started scheming about how to get more bee grenades. 

### 

It was days before anyone found a trace of a Venatori. 

Or, rather, it was days before anyone found a useful trace of a Venatori. There were all the corpses and bloodstains and evidence of arcane rituals you expected in a place overrun by murderous Tevinter cultists. The problem lied in the fact that murderous Tevinter cultists do not, in general, allow witnesses to walk away from their arcane rituals. Or if they did, it was as a shambling, spirit-possessed corpse.

“I suppose that any civilians who survived the desert have been turned into walking skeletons by now,” Dorian said, gazing at a scene that brought home the Venatori’s ways in excruciating detail. “What are they trying to do, corrupt a dragon? Raise an army of corpses? Start a bathhouse where you bathe in the blood of infants? Extraordinary.” 

Despite his flippant words, Dorian felt his stomach clenching as he turned in a slow circle, surveying yet another abandoned campsite. The Venatori were not being careful about hiding their presence, rightly assuming that they could easily take on most parties who were brave enough to object. Remnants of death were scattered around, a few fresh-looking skulls, the odd vial of blood, scraps of clothing and discarded jewelry lying half-embedded in the sand. “One could almost admire their work ethic, not even taking the holidays off from dark rituals.” 

“Makes me sick is what it does,” was Sera’s contribution. “They must be near, yeah? Let’s kill them and be done with it. The only good ‘Vint is a dead ‘Vint.” 

“For once, I’m inclined to agree with you,” Dorian said. “But please prioritize shooting the other ‘Vints, if you would be so kind.” 

### 

If the abandoned campsites were disturbing, when they actually found the Venatori Dorian neither could nor wanted to hide his reaction. 

Perhaps they Venatori had become tired of running from the Inquisition, or perhaps they just thought that they were invincible. Probably the latter, knowing the temperament of the average demon-summoning, undead-creating, Corypheus-worshipping mage. Dorian did not intend to stop and hear their reasoning, in any case, as he stared with undisguised hatred at the mages ambushing them from over a nearby dune. His staff always sparked with the threat of fire and lightning, but now the flames were winding around his hand and electricity flickered between the curving points. 

“Shall we give my countrymen a warm welcome, then?” Was that his voice? Why did he sound so calm when he wanted to scream and charge at them? He always thought of himself as composed, not cold. Perhaps he was wrong, in some way. 

Regardless, he followed up on his comment by flinging a sphere of fire at the Venatori. There were screams, as flesh caught fire, and Dorian grinned in sick satisfaction, and readied another fireball to throw into the slower-moving hoard of undead that was approaching from the left. Next to him Iron Bull readied an axe, preparing to charge forward when the mages broke free of the superheated sand. Trevelyan had disappeared already, presumably darting into the fire and smoke to cripple Venatori. And, on his other side, Sera hefted a jar. 

“I still haven’t tested these,” she said. “Seems like these people could use a few wasps.”

Dorian stared, grinning slow and feral as he realized what she was proposing. “Please do,” he said. And that was the only warning anyone got before several jars full of angry bees went flying into a group of enraged blood mages, and abominations, and thralls, and undead citizens.

Under any other circumstances, the result would have been hilarious. Venatori screamed, more panicked than they were when they had been set on fire, using staffs crafted from dragonbone and onyx to swat at the air, yelling at each other about what spells they could possibly use to defend themselves from swarms of bees. Dorian heard the soft hiss of mage-wards cast, which for the most part only served to trap the bees inside the wards with the Venatori. 

Iron Bull took the opportunity to charge in, bashing skulls, spilling blood on sands that were already stained red. Sera just stayed back and laughed, shooting arrow after arrow, alternating neat kill-shots with shots calculated to wound and embarrass. 

The Venatori fell almost immediately, between the bees and the fire and the arrows. Their undead companions were less considerate, however. Dorian recognized the practical clothes of hunters and soldiers and sighed, feeling his anger drain away. It’s not as if they were aware, he told himself. And if they were they would appreciate being put to rest, the remains of their bodies destroyed until they could not be used as vessels. They’d thank the inquisition, if they could. 

It was no comfort, and the bright anger that had possessed him against the Venatori metamorphosed neatly into a dull, aching sadness as the undead advanced. Beside him, Sera noticed. 

“Hey, fancypants! Not the time!”, she yelled, dragging him out of the way of a clawed hand. 

“Of… of course.” his energy did not return to him, but he broke the spell well enough to raise his staff once again, speaking a prayer to something that he barely believed in as used the same spell he’d flung at the Venatori to strike down the recently-dead.

The undead fell quickly enough once he recovered from his shock, a concerted attack between two rogues, a mage, and a fighter more than enough to wear down the hardiest abomination. The rest of his group laughed as they ended the fight, adrenaline rushing through them, Sera crowing about the success of her bee grenades, Iron Bull’s low chuckle rumbling through Dorian, Trevelyan’s small smile showing her pleasure at the outcome. 

Dorian couldn’t bring himself to join them. He kicked at a Venatori corpse, not even stopping to heal himself before he rifled through pockets, looking for anything that could give away their larger plans. And, after that proved fruitless, he found himself staring at the undead. Even the abominations had some semblance of humanity, now that the demons possessing had been destroyed. 

They were people, Dorian thought, breath coming quick and short. They had families who will never know what happened to them. They were used and killed and used again even after their deaths, by his own countrymen. 

Not sure what he hoped to accomplish, Dorian bent over the mercifully, finally, dead, mechanically removing jewelry and scarves and pieces of paper and anything else that could be a distinguishing feature. Quietly, he cursed himself for being careless in the fight - there were pieces of paper and cracked jewels and charred fabrics that had been burned up by his own spells. 

Quietly, he felt himself teetering at the edge of contemplating all of the other corpses they’d destroyed and left lying in fields and bogs and forests, before he wrestled his mind away. 

“One thing at a time, Dorian,” he whispered to himself. 

### 

The camp was as cold as he expected, and too cold to ever adjust to. Dorian shuffled closer to the fire, quiet in the darkness, careful not to make any noise that could wake his sleeping companions. Alone was something he rarely wished to be, but right now he was unsure how to face anyone. Despite the cold he found himself walking away from the camp, huddling under the cover of a nearby dune. 

From one of the many pockets carefully sewed into his cloak he pulled the scraps of things he’d recovered from the corpses the Venatori had flung at them. Jewelry, distinctive bits of cloth, the charred remains of letters. He laid them on the ground, sorting between the things he’d found on the soldiers and hunters. Carefully, painstakingly, he rubbed the worst of the ash away from the jewelry and squinted at the near-illegible letters. 

“That’s the thing,” he muttered to himself. “Everyone has something distinctive. Now, you must all have come from around here. Who were you? Where are your families?” 

Dorian flopped boneless back into the sand and ran his hands through his hair, careless of the mess he was making of the perfectly-styled. He squinted into the moonlight, wondering if there were any answers to be had in the constellations that shone so clearly out here, where nothing lived.

And nearly jumped out of his skin when a voice spoke from behind him, instinctively grabbing the staff that was ever at his side. 

But it was only Sera, ever-quiet footsteps disguised further by the hiss of the sand in the wind and by Dorian’s own distraction. “Whatcha doing out here?”, she said, moving to sit beside him. 

“Didn’t think a fancypants like you collected stuff,” Sera remarked as she saw the collection of items Dorian was leaning over. 

He sighed, huddling closer into his thin cloak. It had been too much to hope that the rogue wouldn’t notice his departure from the campsite. Whatever else she may be, Sera was as wary and perceptive as anyone he’d ever met. 

“Nothing in particular,” he said, biting the words off one by one. How exactly did one explain to an acquaintance that one was seized by an immeasurable amount of doubt and regret and loathing? 

And then sighed, again. Sera’s eyes were shrewd with concern, and she was fiddling nervously with an arrow, no doubt consciously keeping herself from commenting on Dorian’s state. 

“You must be so shocked to see me like this,” he said, with a thin attempt at humor. “I haven’t fixed my hair in hours. Am i even recognizable?” 

“It’s not the hair. And the hair’s fine. You look more like a person when it looks like hair. This stuff, though? That’s not like you. You don’t carry around things, unless they’re books or magic.” 

Dorian considered Sera for a long moment. After all, who better to talk to about this? She cared about the common folk, certainly, and was no stranger to odd quests with odd goals and unlikely outcomes. Slowly, he felt himself falling into trusting Sera, yielding to his own weariness more than making any conscious decision. 

“I suppose nothing can get past you. Very well, then.” Dorian gestured to the small collection of items. “These are all from the undead we fought earlier.” 

Yelping in disgust, Sera dropped the locket she had casually picked up. “What? Are they magic? They’re magic, aren’t they. Getem away.” 

“They’re just things.” Dorian wondered when he had started doing so much uncharacteristic sighing. He was going to have to get properly drunk after this, and perhaps find someone to keep him company for a night or two. “They’re things that belonged to people.” 

“Yeah?” Sera continued to eye them with suspicion. “You sure they aren’t blood magic shite?” 

“They’re all perfectly ordinary. But I was thinking, earlier. We’ve fought a great number of undead, haven’t we? Abomination, skeletons, walking corpses, and so on. Many of them were recently dead, likely killed and created by the Venatori.” Memories of a dozen battles flashed behind Dorian’s eyelids. Abominations in the Hinterlands, shambling corpses in Crestwood, a thousand bodies left maimed and discarded where only another group of adventurers might find them. A thousand lovers or parents or children living on, suspecting but never knowing. 

And if these were not Dorian’s fault or responsibility, what of it? The Venatori were not interested in finding families and providing comfort and explanations, and no one else seemed interested in stepping in. 

“We’ve destroyed so many abominations and undead,” he said, sarcasm and wit falling by the wayside for one moment in a life filled with words used as misdirection. “And they were all people once, weren’t they? They must come from somewhere. Has anyone been telling their families? How many parents are lying in bed not knowing where their children disappeared to?”

“...huh,” said Sera, quietly thoughtful. Dorian could see her pause, too, thinking for perhaps the first time of all the bodies the Inquisition left strewn in its wake, dragged into a fight far too big for them through no fault of their own. And then, to his surprise, she grinned. 

“We can do something about that,” she said. 

Dorian stared, a bitter laugh bubbling up before he managed to regain what shreds of composure he had this evening. “And what is your plan exactly? Go to every town we’ve ever been near and demand a list of missing persons? Hand out flyers with descriptions? I can just picture it. ‘Wanted: anyone who knows the identity of a boy wearing a yellow scarf, last seen shredded by demons in the Hissing Wastes’. We’ll be welcomed as heroes, I don’t think.” 

“Well you don’t have to be involved in this if you’re gonna be like that,” Sera snapped. “Damn mages. Go feel sorry for yourself somewhere else.” 

“I… forgive me. It has been a long day. Now please, what is your plan? I do hope it doesn’t involve bees.” 

Sera’s grin returned, bright and wild again. “It’s the friends of Red Jenny, of course,” she said, as if that explained everything. 

“Excuse me?” 

“The Red Jennys. You know I’m one of them. And I know the little people, and the other Jennys know more of the little people, and the little people know everyone.” She paused. “Dunno, there might be bees, if someone needs bees thrown at them. Could work, yeah?” 

Dorian looked directly at Sera for the first time since she had initially startled him out in the sands. “Are you saying that you actually think you can identify these people?” 

“Probably. Don't know why I didn’t think of it before. Sort of thing I do, yeah? Looking out for the people that get stomped on by the nobles. And these people need looking out for them, even if they’re already dead. Should’ve done it before.” 

“Ah. Well, that’s fantastic!” Dorian tried a smile; it felt not quite sincere, but somewhere in the vicinity of possible. “So what, do we have descriptions made of the items and sent out? Sketches of the more identifiable people? Do the Jennys keep track of people who vanish?” 

“Guess so.” Sera tilted her head in thought, tapping one finger on the arrow that she still held. “People talk to us about problems, so I just need to hear about the problems that are people. Or missing people, I guess. The little people don’t really know about us, but they get the feeling when there’s someone who can help them with the big people. But to start, I can make the drawings.” 

Dorian laughed, finally. “Sera, that’s incredible! You know, I can’t thank you enough for offering to help. Shall we keep collecting items? And try to note any distinguishing features of anyone who is still recognizable?” 

“May as well. You keep track of things, and when we get back to Skyhold we’ll do things.”


	2. Chapter 2

The journey back to Skyhold was about as uneventful as could be expected given the group of people traveling. Dorian lived in fear of a sudden case of bees, but so far Sera was as good as her word when it came to aiming them only at people who needed to be chased by a few wasps. 

Not that it made them a perfect weapon for every situation. The rare group of bandits were panicked by the sight of a swarm of angry wasps descending on them and tended to run away before the battle could begin in earnest, but creatures of the fade, abominations, and possessed corpses did not care nearly so much. 

And bears, as it turned out, were only irritated by the insects. 

This bear was already irritated to start with, finding four shambling adventurers stumbling into what it no doubt considered its home. Dorian would have felt bad for it, had it not immediately tried to bite his head off in a more literal way than he was used to. “Inquisitor! Perhaps this is a fight we’d be better off abandoning!”, he yelled, narrowly avoiding the swipe of a claw the size of his head. 

“Nah,” Iron Bull said, and now that Dorian thought of it he wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Iron Bull back away from a fight. “We didn’t get to kill the dragon in the Wastes, you’re not taking me away from this fight. Just stay back.” 

Dorian’s only response was a sound of deep disgust that, he hoped, encompassed all of the disdain he had for nature, particularly the parts that kept trying to eat him. And then a few more, hastier steps back, as Sera’s cackle warned of something no-doubt nasty coming his way. Ahead of him he saw Trevelyan’s shadowed figure glance toward her and then dart away from the bear, thankfully with more than enough nimbleness and presence of mind to clear the area. Even Iron Bull took the warning seriously enough to slow down until whatever Sera-caused unpleasantness was over.

“Eat it!” Sera yelled, sending two jars of something arcing overhead. Bees, Dorian assumed, at least in one jar. What could Sera possibly pair with bees? Improved bees? Larger bees? Bees with anger issues? Bees, but with stronger poison? 

In fact there was only one jar of bees; the other was some gooey viscous substance that looked like it would wreak havoc on clothes. Dorian was well outside of the splash zone, but he took a few more steps back in any case. The bear seemed to agree with him, as it stopped snarling at them and instead glared at its paws, puzzled, lifting them one by one out of the goo and taking slow steps towards the edge of the puddle. 

And then, of course, a jar of bees hit square in the middle of the goo. They swarmed, as angry bees are wont to do, diving at the bear. It seemed only mildly annoyed, though, and while Dorian didn’t know much about wildlife he could hazard the guess that the bear’s thick fur was good protection against stinging creatures. and.. . how intelligent were bees, exactly? Was it just him, or were they losing interest in the bear? He could feel their beady, multifaceted eyes looking around for new targets. Better targets, with more exposed skin and soft flesh and sensitive pain receptors. 

He backed yet again, colliding with Sera. “Sera,” he said, once again impressed with his own ability to keep his voice calm and measured even when faced with the imminent prospect of insects, “Is it just me, or are they becoming interested in us?”

“Are they?” She squinted at the furiously buzzing cloud. It hadn’t attacked them yet, but it had stopped divebombing the bear and seemed to be drifting slowly in their direction. “Hey, they are! Smart bees.” 

“Yes, yes, but is this the time to marvel about the intelligence of nature? I rather think we should start running.” 

“Quizzy! Bull! There’s a bee problem. Beeblem? Bees! Let’s scarper!” 

The buzzing grew louder as they bolted out of the forest, and the bees seemed to realize that their prey was trying to escape. 

“So I saw a pond not so far on the other side of the road,” Iron Bull said conversationally, not sounding at all like he was sprinting away from a swarm of wasps. 

“Oh thank the Maker,” Dorian said with significantly less composure. “Do lead on.” 

Dorian heard buzzing behind him all the way to the pond, and although he considered himself a fit man he found that he was panting and laboring far more than Trevelyan, Sera, or Iron Bull. Too many days spent in the library recently, he thought. 

The pond they aimed for was small and muddy and had frogs moving about on the banks. For a moment, Dorian considered braving the bees instead. This was such a nice cloak he was wearing, after all.

“The bees’ll make holes in your pretty tunic!” Sera yelled, apparently reading his mind. Was that true? It sounded plausible. Perhaps he should research the finer points of stinging insects when he got back to his library, in self-preservation if nothing else. In any case, Dorian sighed, casting a sad clance over the silk that he was about to sacrifice. He jumped in, ducking his head under the water just as the bees finally reached them. 

As he waited in the water, unable to see clearly what was going on in the surface, Dorian reflected that he’d never thought to increase the time he could hold his breath for. There must be a spell to let one breathe underwater, surely? Perhaps some combination of a shield spell and a wind spell would do the trick? But of course that would only work if it was cast before one entered the water, and in most cases where you end up hiding underwatcher you probably wouldn't have a great deal of time to prepare. 

Or perhaps a fade step, he thought, trying to drown (hah) out the tightness in his lungs and sudden lightheadedness as the last of his air was spent. Yes, just send enough of yourself to the fade to breathe there, and keep your physical body under the water. Of course, the panic from being under water might increase your chances of attracting demons. But similar spells were cast under other stressful circumstances frequently, and it had never been a problem before. 

Dorian squinted, desperately trying to make out any details above the water. It unsurprisingly failed, and in the spirit of inquiry he reached a hand out in the direction he remembered Trevelyan being. Nothing was there. Perhaps they had drifted apart. 

His thoughts were interrupted by a huge hand grabbing the back of his robes and dragging him to the surface. Dorian came up sputtering, coughing up water he hadn’t realized he’d inhaled.

“Thought you’d drowned under there,” Iron Bull remarked, as Dorian continued to splutter. “Relax. They lost interest pretty quick. That’s some lung capacity you got. I can think of other uses for someone who can hold their breath that long.” 

“Barbaric,” Dorian managed to choke out between coughing fits. “And my clothes are absolutely ruined. Let’s not do this again?” 

“Thought you had some magic to clean silk,” Sera said. “And your hair.” She giggled. “The mud!” 

“Yes, yes, let’s all laugh at Dorian, who clearly isn’t in enough pain already,” he snapped, regretfully stroking his ruined tunic as they walked down the road. 

And then, more urgently, patting his pockets, sighing in relief when he found that the trinkets he’d recovered from the undead were still there and no more disgusting than they had been originally. Despite his ruined state, he found a new spring in his step and enough energy to goad Sera. “I heard somewhere that rogues are stealthy. Have you ever tried it?”

Sera just stuck her tongue out at him. “Oooh, you’re one to talk, setting things on fire wherever you go. Bet you that’s how the spies or whatevers follow us, just following the trial of Dorian’s magicky fire bullshit.” 

“As if they would have to when they could just follow the trail of traumatized bears. Or talk to some bandits. ‘Excuse me, sir bandit, have you seen an elf of dubious parentage who thinks that bees are a weapon?’ it does make you rather memorable.” 

“Memorable like a ‘Vint getting weepy over corpses?” 

“It’s not as though I walk around crying about such things. I keep my pain internal, thank you very much.” 

“Heh. Still unusual. And you don’t need to cry over bloody undead to be recognizable. ‘Hey you, seen a Tevinter who wasn’t cackling evilly? One who didn’t have spikes and bloodstains?’ simple as that, found Dorian!” 

“That’s.. Unfortunately plausible,” Dorian said, blinking quickly, feeling unusually touched. “I believe i’ll take it as a compliment.” 

“Me too. Not every day you meet a rogue smart enough to use bees.” 

“Indeed, Sera.”

### 

Their arrival in Skyhold as, as usual, heralded by at least four tasks that had to be completed immediately. There was research to be done, materials to catalogue, political advice to give. Nevertheless, Dorian stubbornly carved out an hour or two each day to work on their project. 

“So,” he said, sitting comfortably in Sera’s crowded tavern room rather than his cozy library nook. “These must have come from the towns closest to the Hissing Wastes, wouldn’t you agree?” 

The room was as full of trinkets as ever, but at least it was comfortable. The benches were piled with pillows and fabric, and there was always plenty of food nearby. Dorian had helped himself to a bowl of soup from the kitchens, and while he’d never consider it fine cuisine it was certainly adequate for an evening of planning. 

“Mmm. there aren’t any on the maps, though. Think there’s some encampment we missed?” Sera replied indistinctly, in between bites of a pie. “Hunters in the wastes, maybe.” 

“Or a waylaid caravan. Although there wasn’t any evidence of such a thing.” 

“Not like there would be, with how quickly stuff gets hidden under sand,” Sera said. “All that wind. Ugh.” 

Dorian stared gloomily at the collection of items laid out before him. Already, this was beginning to feel like an impossible task, and they had barely begun. 

“Well,” he said with forced cheer, “we may as well begin at the beginning. I’ll write down what i remember of the bodies that hadn’t… decayed too drastically yet. And you said you could sketch these things?” 

“Can so,” said Sera. “And you can start writing descriptions of them too. More we’ve got, the better. And copies? Should we keep copies?” 

“Now that you mention it, i’m certain we should.” he looked around once again at the cramped alcove. “And I believe we may need a new cabinet to keep things in, if this goes on.” 

Messages to the Red Jennys were sent out, complete with sketches and descriptions of people and objects. It seemed that all there was to do was wait.

Dorian had never been more frustrated with the sluggishness of messenger birds. They were the best option, of course, but even a well-trained one took a couple days to reach their destination, and there was no guarantee that they found the correct person, and no way to know if they didn’t. 

“Are you sure this will work?” Dorian asked, gazing out over the skyhold courtyard, an unfinished plate of tarts sitting between him and Sera. 

She shrugged, much more eloquently than a shrug should be. The tilt of her shoulders conveyed hope and resignation and determination all at once. “Dunno. But we’ve got to keep trying, haven’t we? And it’s not like we’ve found all the undead. Maybe we should get someone to collect more things.” 

### 

So Dorian found himself pulling Scout Harding to the side next time she returned to Skyhold. “A word, please? Somewhere quiet?” he said, standing among the visiting merchants and gossiping politicians of the castle entrance. 

Harding’s look was mildly confused. Dorian was friendly, but generally didn’t go out of his way to talk to people who spent all of their time in the wild. “Of course,” she said, professional as always. “Something you need?” 

He led them back to his favorite nook in the library. Not the most private, certainly, but Solas was away at the moment, Leliana certainly knew everything already, and the other people who frequented the tower tended to be trustworthy or risked being chased off by crows. 

“Yes. now that we’re away from all those politicians, I have a favor to ask. There’s rather a lot of undead around, aren’t there? How many of them would you estimate are recently deceased?” 

Scout Harding sat down and took a moment to silently calculate. “It’s hard to say. There are lots of skeletons around, probably soldiers from former blights. You might estimate better than i can, though. You know about this sort of magic, don’t you?” 

“Unfortunately I do,” he replied. “Necromancy was just sort of around when I was learning magic.” he neglected to point out that necromancy was technically his specialty - although not that sort of necromancy, of course. “The decayal rates of undead tend to be unpredictable, although I imagine that all the shambling would tend to loosen flesh from bone relatively quickly.” 

Harding nodded as though he’d just confirmed one of her own suspicions. “In that case, I have no idea. A few undead are clearly fresh corpses, but most look older. Some of them have scraps of clothes on them still, and I’d guess that those ones are also recent.” she sighed heavily. “All told, maybe a tenth of the things you fight are the recently dead? There are certainly enough cultists running around to raise them, though you’ve brought their numbers down recently. And we scouts run away from abominations rather than fight them, but there are just so many… every day, practically, we get reports of some thing running around the forests attacking people.” 

“These are dark times,” Dorian said softly, gazing towards the light in the sky. 

“Why? There’s no way to reverse that sort of thing, is there?”

“No, although I do hope that the number of undead will go down somewhat now that we’ve taken out so many Venatori. Although there may always be some roaming around…” he trailed off. “But that’s a problem for another day. No, the favor i’m asking is much more mundane.”

He turned toward Scout Harding, attempting to convey trust and sincerity. “Scout Harding, next time you happen upon a pack of walking skeletons, or even a few ordinary inanimate corpses, would you do me the favor of collecting any trinkets they have, marking down any features you can still make out, and tracking where they were found?”

“Odd thing to ask, but sure. What is this, some sort of research idea? Should I spread the word?”

“Just among the scouts, if you please. And yes, you could call it research of a sort. I’d like to test a hypothesis.” 

Harding nodded and stood up. “Well, I’ll have a bundle for you next time I report back. Now if that’s all, I have some reports to deliver to the spymistress.” 

“Of course,” Dorian said, with his most courteous smile. “I can’t thank you enough.” 

### 

A month later there were still no positive identifications, but Sera’s cabinet had become full of bracelets and handkerchiefs and sketches of what a collection of half-rotted corpses might have looked like when they was alive. Scout Harding had made good on her promise to bring the things found on corpses back to Skyhold. Not that it seemed to help much. 

“We just don’t have the reach,” Dorian said to Sera one day, sad and exasperated. 

“Well not yet,” Sera said, with her usual bright optimism. “But more people are hearing what we’re doing, and they’re telling other people, and soon we will. It’s how people work, see?” 

“I can’t believe that you’re teaching me patience, of all people.” 

She shrugged. “Can’t do what we can’t do,” she said. “Do you try to finish everything on your own? You need people to help with things. Honestly, thought you would know that, with all your ideas about reforming your country or whatever.” 

“Yes, well,” Dorian started, and then found himself quite unable to form a coherent argument. He would need help, after all, to achieve any of his goals. “All of this waiting is wearing on my nerves. This is why I like magic, you understand? You cast your spell and something catches on fire immediately. There’s none of this tedious waiting around, not knowing if progress is being made somewhere else.” 

“I feel that,” Sera said, hopping up from where she was sitting cross-legged on the cushions with one fluid movement. “Waiting, ugh. Let’s do drinks and insults.”

Dorian snorted in a quite unrefined manner. Perhaps Sera was rubbing off on him, he thought. “It’s as good a way to pass the time as any. Downstairs, then?”

The bartender raised an eyebrow at the sheer amount of booze Dorian and Sera ordered together, but knew better than to challenge the unruly elf over it. Drinks and insults was a familiar game at this point, and as simple as the name: get dreadfully drunk, and take turns insulting each other. 

A few drinks later they were well into the swing of things. 

“Bet you have a servant just for your mustache and it still looks like a spider sticking to your face,” Sera slurred between sips of beer. 

“If we’re insulting each others appearances,” Dorian said, with the slow enunciation of an extremely drunk person trying very hard to keep the illusion of sobriety, “your hair must have been cut by a blind knifethrower.” 

“Ooooooh,” Sera drawled. “Chunks of your hair are missing. Bet you got the sides caught on those fancy straps you’re always wearing.” 

“Yes? Well, Fereldens are already rather like poor fuzzy animals, and you’re a particularly scrawny specimen, so --” 

Because the universe had a poor sense of humor, they finally got a response while both of them were ass-deep in drink, and while Dorian was working up to an extended metaphor comparing Sera to an entire colony of rats. 

“Message for, uh, Red Jenny,” a confused messenger said, eyes slipping between the necromancer and the rogue, both of who were laughing madly and nearly falling out of their chairs. 

“Yeah?”, Sera said, between drunken giggles. “Just. Just leave it here.” 

“...are you quite sure you’re the right person?”, the messenger asked, clearly concerned that he was about to fuck up the job. 

Sera kept laughing, but Dorian just managed to contain himself long enough to give a coherent response. “We,” he said, with the careful gravity of the extremely drunk, “are the persons representing Red Jenny. Please leave your message with us.” When the messenger didn’t move he leaned forward and hand over a few coppers, fumbling them in the process. The messenger barely caught them before they clattered to the floor. 

“And I used to be so good at that,” Dorian said to himself. “Discrete. At things.” And, oh, the messenger must have fled while he was muttering to himself, for there was a ragged envelope in front of him and the boy was nowhere to be seen. 

“Givit here,” Sera said, grabbing for it. Dorian made no move to open the envelope first, and firmly denied to himself that it was because of his extreme intoxication. Clearly he would have let Sera reach the letter first even if he had been able to use his hands properly. 

Across the table, Sera was squinting at it. “It says -- says -- hey Dorian, it’s news! About our thing!” 

“Are you quite paying attention to what you’re saying? What thing?”

Sera made several gestures in quick succession. Squinting, Dorian decided that they probably weren’t meant to be obscene. Sera’s obscene gestures tended toward the extremely clear and coherent, and these were more vague and suggestive than anything. “Er. Penis? No, ring… noose? Scarf?” Sera had strayed away from the vaguely suggestive and into the downright abstract. “Wind? Fly? River? Sera, what are you doing with your hands?” 

Her frantic miming dissolved into snorts. “It’s spirits, dummy.” 

“Er, spirits? What do spirits have to do with --” and he paused, attempting to mimic the wavy, vague wiggles Sera had been making with her hands. 

“You know. They’re wobbly. And windy, and weird. Lots of w-sounds.” she waved the letter in his face. “Spirits! You didn’t drink that much, you just that dense naturally?” 

For at least the second time that evening, Dorian nearly fell out of his chair. “Oh. Oh! The undead!” and that last phrase might have been a bit loud, because the tavern fell quiet and he found an uncomfortable number of people staring at him. “Ah, this isn’t Tevinter,” he muttered, and then realized he had meant to not say that. The stares were intensifying. 

Sera must have noticed as well, because she was hauling Dorian up, supporting him much more easily than her thin frame looked like it should be capable of. “He’s not that sort of ‘Vint,” she yelled to the tavern at large. “Touch him and you’ll catch bees.” 

They exited slowly, leaning against each other and bursting into giggles, the letter clutched tightly in Sera’s hand for attention once both of them had become slightly more sober. The stairs proved a challenge, but Dorian found himself collapsing on one of the pillow-covered benches in Sera’s room without really remember how he got there. And darkness, hazy and warm and optimistic for the first time in a while, took him. 

### 

The morning was not so kind. Dorian was… where, exactly? Well, first things first. The surface he was on was irregular, soft but lumpy, and the edge of the… bed? Was uncomfortably close. One arm was asleep, pinned beneath his torso. And was that drool stuck to his face? 

There was instant regret as he opened his eyes slowly. Sera’s room, of course. No one else had so many pillows. Dorian was suddenly grateful that the sun rarely shone directly through the windows on this side of the building; the soft light of day was more than enough to make his head ache. “Urgh,” he said, trying and failing to come up with a word that encompassed his discomfort and eventually sticking to what he knew. “Vishante kaffas.” 

A mug of some suspicious liquid was pushed into his field of vision. He cautiously picked it up. He squinted at it. He sniffed it, and turned his head away as the vile smell sparked a fresh coughing fit. 

“Sera,” he said, “are you sure you didn’t mix up the tea with one of your grenades?” 

“Don’t drink it then,” she said. “Suffer. Keep moaning about your headache.” 

He glowered as much as he was able, which was sincerely but not particularly convincingly in his state. Cautiously, he sipped the supposed hangover cure. 

“This is a joke, isn’t it,” he said, staring deeply into the mug of something that tasted vaguely of herbs and dust and coarse coffee grounds. “What did you just give me?” 

“Not saying,” Sera said, “but it’s real. See? I had one, and do I look hungover?” 

And she was far too chipper to be hungover, or was doing a convincing act of it. Dorian sighed, braced himself, and gulped down the rest. And lay back down on the unevenly-cushioned bench almost immediately, as his stomach voiced its opinion that he should not have done such a thing. 

Ten minutes of unmoving discomfort seemed enough to quiet down all of the various protesting bits of his body, and Dorian sat up as slowly as possible. The taste of the concoction lingered in his mouth, but the light didn’t make him want to claw his eyes out. 

“Right. Well, I feel somewhere in the vicinity of human again,” he said begrudgingly. “You look like there’s something important.” 

Sera was literally bouncing with excitement. “Course you wouldn't remember. Mages can’t hold their liquor.” She pulled a vaguely familiar envelope out of a pocket. “The friends of Red Jenny! They found one!” 

Dorian took the proffered letter. And, yes, it was familiar. He remembered a nervous messenger handing it over last night, and recalled squinting at the first line as it refused to pass through his brain. 

_To whom it may concern,_

it read, the writing a clumsy scratch in contrast to the grace of the words. 

_The accoutrements described by the agent of Red Jenny belonged to the hunter Matthias, who was last seen mounting an expedition to the Hissing Wastes in search of sand scorpions with several companions. Enclosed is a sketch of the man and the ring you recovered, drawn by his sister. His name was Matthias._

The letter ended in a messy scrawl and several smeers, which Dorian could only assume were from teardrops. 

“Well,” he said, mostly to break the silence. “It’s been a month, hasn’t it? And we finally found one.” 

“Sure did,” Sera agreed happily, stretching and standing up on her tiptoes, smile radiant. “We’re sending the stuff to the people, right? I’ll find a messenger.” 

“I believe we must,” Dorian agreed, lightheaded with some emotion that he couldn’t quite name. Or was it only the hangover? 

“How odd,” he continued, after a few more moments of silence. “I wasn’t sure how I’d feel when we finally started finding them. It’s not happiness, exactly. Or relief. Bother. And normally I’m so very good with words.” 

“Yeah, yeah, sit around and talk about your precious feelings all day,” Sera said, already rifling through the cabinet to locate the trinkets they’d found on the first group in the Hissing Waste. “Now this stuff’s the easy bit. It’s talking to them that’s hard. We need a letter-writing party, yeah?” 

“I suppose,” Dorian said, putting aside his inner monologue for another few minutes. “And a trustworthy messenger, of course. I presume your people have one?”

“Like you need to ask. The Red Jennys have everything important.” 

### 

Drafting the letter took significantly longer than either of them expected, and for once they huddled together in Dorian’s corner of the library rather than in Sera’s tavern room. It seemed appropriate, he had said, and Sera had not seemed inclined to protest. 

She offered suggestions, mostly, while Dorian hunched over a fine sheet of parchment and wrote in his finest penmanship. 

“Should we use that good stuff? We want them to think we care, not that we’re more noble arseholes,” she said, as he first selected the parchment. 

“But we also want to show respect. And if we were noble arseholes, as you so carefully put it, we wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble.” 

She snorted, unconvinced, but let him continue with the writing business. 

_Dear Madam,_ he started, 

_The inquisition sends its deepest regrets for your loss. I have enclosed the items we found on Matthias’ corpse_

“Bit harsh, don’t you think?”, Sera volunteered

_and an explanation that I am sure is long overdue. We found his body in the Hissing Wastes, and while we were too late to save him, we put him to rest properly._

“Fire’s cleansing and all, but does ‘burned his undead corpse to a crisp’ really count as a proper burial?”

“We’re offering comfort, aren’t we? And you can’t set someone to rest more thoroughly than ridding their undead body of the spirit forcing them to commit dread acts from beyond the grave.”

Sera sigh. “Fair, I guess.”

_Although we seek only to end the fighting, we are faced with the cold truth that we bear partial responsibility for the deaths caused by those who would harm us. And as our foes will bear none of that weight, we will take as much of it as we can. We cannot offer you half the comfort you deserve._

_Know that your son’s death was at the hands of Tevinter mages who would use the innocent to harm anyone who stands in their way. Know that we avenged him._

And Sera broke in again, with “bit strong, yeah? We weren’t thinking about that.” 

“We’re being comforting! And we did avenger him, after all.”

_We cannot make this right, and if it were in my power I would grant anything you wished in a vain attempt to heal some of this wound. Instead, I find myself making a request of you, in your darkest time.  
If you know of anyone else who was killed or wounded or spirited away_

“Eugh, bad choice of words,” Sera said.

_send word to me. I will avenge when able, and pass news on to anyone who should hear it. Our scouts will carry eulogies for the dead and find tokens that may be passed on to the living. And if sometimes I will be able to offer nothing, I will mourn with you._

_Yours in regret,  
Dorian Pavus and Sera, of the Inquisition. _

Sera read the letter over, frowning in thought. “Sounds more like a pronouncement than a letter, innit? And we’re just on behalf of ourselves, not the Inquisition. Don’t think they’re interested in hearing from a bunch of bloody soldiers anyway.” 

He let the quill slip from his fingers. “Perhaps you’re right. They deserve rather more, don’t they? But I don’t believe I can do any better.” Dorian’s laugh was a bit hysterical. “If you need someone to turn back time or open the fade or call down lightning you couldn’t find a better man, but I’m afraid that a sympathetic letter may be beyond me.” 

Sera sighed, squinted again at the letter. “Let’s sleep on it, yeah?” 

“I rather think we’d better.” 

### 

The next day brought another session of hunching over parchment, madly crossing out phrases. The result was much the same as Dorian’s first draft, and he felt worries pool inside him as they worked. 

“What do we do when we get more?”, he said, beginning to fear the thing he’d been so determined to achieve. “What do we say to all these people? Their families vanish, their friends die, their puppies are turned into adorable little weapons to hurl at us, and we sit in our castle giving our sympathies.” 

Sera blew a raspberry, clearly unimpressed by his moaning. “Yeah? And what’s your plan, not saying anything? Look, fancypants, they want to know what happened to their people, and we tell them, and if we can we send a pie or something. Simple.”

“That’s all. A -- a pie and some words in exchange for a life.”

“All we can do. You know it, too, when you’re not all screwy in the head.” 

“Yes, well,” Dorian said, glaring at the umpteenth draft of the letter. “Forgive me. It has been a stressful exercise.” 

“Forgiven,” Sera said graciously. “Maybe I should write it.” 

“Yes? And what will you say?” 

She shrugged, pulling out a pen and paper and writing the beginning of a letter. 

_Dear Madam,  
We’re sorry, is all. We found your son, and we found these things that belonged to him, and we thought you’d want them returned. Here’s the things his friends had, too. Bring them to the people who need them, please. He must have been brave, going into the Wastes like that. Wasn’t his fault he got found by people who wanted to hurt us. Wasn’t our fault, I guess, but the people whose fault it was don’t care. So, sorry. From me, and Dorian. The arseholes who did it are dead, and we gave him a burial. _

_We’re looking for anyone else missing. Been looking for bodies and holding on to anything seems important, yeah? Pass it on to all your people, that Sera and Dorian in the Inquisition are looking out for the lost. We’re trying to fix things, and we don’t know if we can, but we can at least do this._

_Sera and Dorian, care of the Inquisition_

“So? That meet your standards?” 

Dorian felt a smile that didn’t feel quite so broken. “Not generally, but in this particular case i believe they exceed them.” 

“Well la-dee-da, aren’t I fancy. Now, let’s find that messenger, yeah?” Sera hopped up and nearly collided with a figure that had just stepped into the alcove. 

“If it’s a messenger you’re looking for, i believe I can help. Connections are my specialty, after all.” 

“Ah, Josephine,” Dorian said, doing what he felt was an incredible job of keeping his composure. “What brings you here?”

“Oh, I had a report to bring to Leliana and I couldn’t help but overhear. I didn’t want to pry, but you two have been working on some project, have you not?” 

“We-ell,” Dorian hesitated, unsure whether this was something he wanted to share. 

Sera punched his arm. “Don’t be an arse,” she said. “More people are good for this, and Josephine’s alright. Now are you explaining or am I?” 

“...I suppose it was my idea,” Dorian said with very little enthusiasm. “Very well. Josephine, there are a great many undead--”

“And regular dead”, Sera interjected. 

“--around the continent who no one is keeping track of. Every town has a list of people who have died or vanished, and we rather thought we’d take responsibility. If you could arrange a few trustworthy messengers to contact the families of the bereaved, we would be grateful.” 

“Ah,” Josephine said, looking refinedly smug rather than surprised. “I suspected as much. You will have your messengers, and do please speak with the full weight of the Inquisition on this matter. Perhaps we will be able to arrange some form of medal as well,” she said, waving her ever-present quill and clipboard enthusiastically. “To give the families a physical token of our gratitude.” 

Sera shrugged. “Maybe for the nobles and some of the religious types,” she said. “Most of them would rather have some flowers and a pie.” 

“Hmm. Pie is not nearly so transportable, but perhaps we can arrange something with few farmers. Please, let me know what you need. This is an excellent thing you are doing, and it will only reflect well on the Inquisition.” 

They exchanged glances, Sera amused, Dorian surprised. “I believe Sera will need a few new cabinets,” he said. “We will talk to you when we’ve ascertained what other supplies we’re in need of.” 

“Of course,” Josephine said, already moving toward Leliana’s tower. “Do keep me updated.” 

### 

Sera got her cabinets. She got messengers too, trustworthy folk picked out by Josephine who slowly became honorary members of the Red Jennys. 

Dorian found himself penning letter after letter, taking Sera’s advice more often than not, sending regrets and memories and what seemed like thousands of flowers. 

It was never enough. It was all anyone could do.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Fandom Trumps Hate 2018, based on a request for Dorian and Sera and their relationship with the rest of the Inquisition. 
> 
> This felt like a strange fanfic while I was writing and it still feels weird, although I like how it turned out. It was supposed to be a lighthearted story about Dorian and Sera playing pranks and bickering with each other and becoming more comfortable with opening up. That... didn't happen. Dorian kept charging off into existential angst, and then I started thinking about all of the story threads that DA:I never really followed through on, and this monster was born. I mean, those corpses that attack you literally everywhere can't all be ancient, right? Some of them must be recent, and made on purpose.
> 
> It might have a sequel, eventually. Dorian and Sera have a lot of work to do, some fun flavors of self-loathing to sort out, and a list of pranks they want to play on Solas. 
> 
> Also Sera is the hardest person to write, her voice is so weird and distinctive and I couldn't nail it down at all.


End file.
